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Thursday, June 22, 2006

Playaway Digital

On my trip to the UPA 2006 conference, I purchased a nifty little audio book, Cell by Stephen King that came with its own player, earphones and batteries. The player details and other book titles can be found at www.playawaydigital.com.

All you had to do to get started was pull the battery protector out and hit play. The user interface is intuitive and easy to control, but the simplicity and completeness of the product is what really impressed me.

I am nearing the end of the book and hear are some things I determined are not as good as they could be:

battery consumption, the player came with two batteries and I am now on battery number four.

If the battery does run out, the player doesn't always remember where you left off. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't. Not sure why.

The black and white LCD display is very hard to read in bright light or no-light.

The book chapter identified by the narrator is not the same as the chapter number display on the player. They should come up with a chapter mapping, so if the narrator says "Part 2, Chapter 1" the player displays something like "P2, CH 1".

The play button is easily depressed when bumping along in my laptop bag, thus the need for some extra batteries. ;)

Overall, a great product and I can't wait to start my own collection! In fact, the playaway website even had suggestions for how to share your titles with others. If you want to swap titles sometime, drop me line - paying shipping is a lot cheaper than buying a new book all the time.